With the success of the Alice Jamieson Film Festival, I decided I wanted to try this same documentary film project approach with another school. This time Ms. Gemma Epp volunteered her four grade seven classes. Add financial support from Calgary 2012 and the Langevin Parent...
Grade seven students learn life skills through documentary filmmaking Date: Tuesday, March 19, 7-9 pm Location: Langevin School (107 - 6A Street NE), Calgary After five months working with Calgary 2012 Artist-in-Residence Chris Hsiung, 120 grade seven students from the Langevin School are showcasing their best documentary...
The last five months I've been teaching the entire Langevin School grade seven contingent on how to make a short documentary video. With four classes of thirty students each giving me roughly 120 students and 4 teachers to work with, this has been a challenging...
Editing is my favourite part of the process. Hours of footage to log, hours of footage you wish you had, and out of all that you hope beyond hope that a story begins to take shape. There are problems with boring interviewees, camera shake over the...
It's hard for me to gauge where the students are at because I can only be there for a short time and not see their progress in between classes. Kate, however, told me a couple stories that delighted me. Apparently, there was a fire alarm...
When I was in grade eight I was typing my school reports on an electric typewriter. If you typed two letters too quickly, the typebars would get jammed. For these two grade eight classes, being a front of a computer was as natural as texting....
Time, finally, to bring out the gear! I'm sure the class has been waiting for this moment where they get to shoot video. We went bare bones for our pilot project. The school already had some camcorders, some of which were (funnily enough) alien to me. Where would...
When you hear Jian Ghomeshi on CBC radio or see Bill Moyers on TV interviewing important figures in our society, you take for granted their ability to draw out meaningful stories from the interviewee. This week's class was about learning how to carry out their...
This week, a great opportunity to hear from the youth about their story ideas. You know you're getting somewhere when the students are talking about it outside of classroom. It indicates motivation beyond what we are telling them to do. Kate has been incredible at managing...
Continuing on the journey, we delved deeper with the class into the story making process. Much of story is about making meaning of our lives and the world we around us. It isn't easy to take a specific event, such as a youth traversing a...